


A Time, and Times, and Half a Time

by DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered



Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25769515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered/pseuds/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered
Summary: When she was young, Mary liked bad girls. Then she fell in love with Shannon, who was too good. But she thinks that most of all, she loves the kind of girl that knows all too well the bad that lurks within herself and still fights for righteousness with all her might. That’s probably the kind of girl she really needs, after all. Mary is no angel her damn self.
Relationships: Shotgun Mary/Shannon Masters, Sister Lilith/Shotgun Mary (Warrior Nun)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 91





	A Time, and Times, and Half a Time

The first time Mary meets Lilith, her heart stops for a good three seconds. She’s tall, her eyes are fierce, and she looks like she’s carved out of marble. Mary is only so strong.

Lilith is already ahead of where Mary is in her training. “Lilith,” Mary says, “what’d you do to your mother that she gave you a name like that?” 

“I’m going to be a Halo Bearer,” Lilith says, ignoring Mary’s comment.

“Good for you,” Mary says disinterestedly, but she likes the cocksure way that the girl said that. _I’m going to be a Halo Bearer,_ like _oh of course that is happening, how could I have not known that?_

“You don’t want to?” Lilith is bewildered by this.

This one is a piece of work, Mary decides. The ambition reeks on her. It doesn’t even occur to Lilith that someone might want to just fight the fight and not be chasing the big prize.

“Halo Bearers don’t get old, though,” Mary speculates.

Lilith looks dead at her, and Mary acts like it’s not a thing. “None of us do.” 

She says it with conviction. Mary has never believed anyone about anything as much as she believes this girl. Mary can see it in Lilith’s posture that she was saying _Yeah I want the prize but I’m here for the fight._

Mary looks her up and down with tacit approval. “Alright then.” 

They are seventeen.

  
  


****

  
  


At some point, Lilith goes from “that girl” to “my friend.” 

She trains hard, and they enjoy training against each other. It’s a challenge. Their styles are wildly different: Lilith is measured, clever, and fast on her feet. Mary is not measured, but comes in like a Hurricane. And yet she talks as her fists fly. You can get a lot of honesty out of someone when you’re beating their ass. 

In the outdoor courtyard under a cool, hazy sky, Mary and Lilith train together and a small group of sister warriors is gathered around. Their fights are always breathtaking displays of skill and a give and take of electricity. 

Mary is in a mood to toy with Lilith. “Just admit you’re in love with me and maybe I won’t beat your ass.”

Their slightly violent ballet continues, and over thick panting breaths, Lilith says, “I won’t.” She’s smiling. 

“Why not?” They disengage and circle each other. 

Lilith comes on the offensive. “If I were to, what would you even do about it?”

Mary considers this as she blocks Lilith’s blows. “I think the real question is, what are _you_ gonna do about it?”

Lilith gets a kick in at Mary’s ribs, and Mary staggers back. Lilith has actually knocked the wind out of her. “Nothing,” Lilith says triumphantly. 

They are eighteen.

  
  


******

Mary’s had a long time to get used to the uneasy balance between her bond with the Order and her necessary independence from it. Lilith gets offended by this on occasion, and Mary thinks it’s probably that she’s jealous of it somehow. Mary never doubts Lilith’s commitment for even a second, but also has the sense Lilith doesn’t have a choice.

Lilith shows up at Mary’s dormitory, her eyes still damp. She won’t say what’s wrong, but Mary lets her in and takes a bottle of red wine out from under the bed. Lilith has been fighting with her mother again. Mary knows because it’s the only thing that makes her cry like this. 

“You’re not supposed to have that,” Lilith comments, but she doesn’t object.

“Yeah, you gonna tell?” Mary pours her a cup.

Lilith smiles and takes the cup. 

Before she went to jail, Mary’s mother used to push her to do her best too, but it never hurt as much as Lilith’s mom’s way of pushing seems to. 

By the time they join the other sisters at dinner, they are lubricated enough that everything seems funny to them. Mother Superion is not amused as she drags Mary out by her ear and confiscates the wine. “But Jesus drank wine,” Mary objects as Mother Superion hauls her off. Lilith tells her later that it was entirely worth it. 

They are nineteen.

  
  
  


********

  
  


Father Vincent has gotten Mary use of the shed behind the rectory. He has long been aware of her talents with woodworking. “You can clean it out and use it as a wood shop,” he says. It’s mostly loaded with junk now, dusty, full of spiderwebs. But it will be hers to use once she gets it in order. 

Sister Shannon is fascinated with the idea of Mary working with wood. Mary knows she shouldn’t want to impress the older girl so much, but she likes the attention. Lilith and Camila are there to help Mary clean out the shed, but the work stops when Shannon comes along, smiling at them with blue eyes like polished glass and asking a lot of questions about it. She wants to see Mary’s work. She notices Camila’s work on the roses out front. She compliments Lilith’s sword technique. She’s humble, friendly, and doesn’t talk about herself much. 

Mary automatically wants to know everything about her, of course.

“Watch yourself,” Lilith warns. 

“Why? I’m not a nun.”

“No, but she is. You’re not going to get what you’re hoping for out of that.” 

They chuckle a little. 

Mary doesn’t mind the teasing, but she wants to know Shannon more, nonetheless.

When Mary skips an evening reading time with Lilith to show Shannon her finished wood shop, Lilith acts like she doesn’t mind. Why should she? Mary begins working that evening, after Shannon goes back to her room, on a sculpture of her in full armor. 

They are twenty.

  
  


********

  
  


Mary is injured on a training mission. It’s Lilith who brings her home, thrown over her shoulder, wiping the blood from her forehead. 

But it’s Shannon who stays by her bedside. She makes tea and reads to her from the gnostic gospels. Mary likes those because they’re full of all the “weird shit,” as she describes it. She falls asleep with Shannon’s hand tangled in hers, and knows she’s falling in love. 

She feels guilty about the time she spends with Shannon. She feels guilty about the time she isn’t spending with Lilith and her sisters. Beatrice sees her and gently warns her that falling in love with a sister is probably going to end in tears one way or the other, and Mary appreciates the beseeching way she says this. Beatrice cares and doesn’t want to see her hurt. 

Mary knows she’s not wrong. She was never sure about her friend Lilith, but Shannon is different. Shannon is too sincere. The interest she takes in Mary’s well-being is more than what she takes in that of the other sisters. Shannon looks at Mary with love in her eyes. Mary wants to talk to someone about it, but Beatrice has said her peace, and Lilith… Mary doesn’t know why, but she doesn’t think Lilith will want to hear about it. 

Instead, she works on her sculpture of Shannon in her spare time, and makes the self-punishing decision to carve every last link of chainmail on her armor. 

They are twenty-one. 

  
  
  


*****

  
  


Love is complicated, but Mary knows she’s in it. She and Shannon sleep side by side many nights. Shannon kisses as if she needs Mary like she needs air. She’s tormented often by guilt and dreams of damnation. Sometimes she wakes up crying in Mary’s arms, even if she fell asleep peacefully. When the one you love most is hurting, all you can do is try to love them more. 

The day that Shannon gets the Halo, Mary finds Lilith outside in the courtyard, glaring at the mountains with tears in her eyes. 

“My mother will probably disown me now.”

“You know your parents suck, right?” Mary says. 

Lilith doesn’t think it’s funny. 

“I know how many generations of Halo Bearers are in your family,” Mary says reassuringly. “Just because it’s not your time, doesn’t mean you’re not going to get it.” 

“In order for that to happen,” Lilith says bitterly, “your girlfriend has to die. Not going to be rooting for that, are you.”

Mary wants her friend to succeed. But she also wants Shannon to stick around for a while. 

Mary gets into a habit of putting ointment on Shannon’s halo scar, something with aloe that Camila has concocted from among her many plants. She is going to outgrow her dormitory soon and will need a greenhouse, Mary thinks. 

Camila’s ointment helps with the itching and the tightness, Shannon reports. And it works as a form of intimacy. Shannon has always struggled with their relationship and wanted it to remain pure. Rubbing ointment into the scar on her back is a way to touch her skin, care for her, in a way that doesn’t fill Shannon with terrible conflict. 

Shannon is the most beautiful person Mary has ever loved. She’s willing to let this be what it needs to be. It’s always been difficult, and Mary has accepted that. But when the Halo comes, she feels Shannon withdraw a part of herself. The barriers that already existed grow just a little bit higher.

She still doesn’t talk about it with Lilith. 

They are twenty-two.

*********

  
  


The sister warriors led by Shannon are a force of nature. Shannon’s quiet tactical brilliance turns them into a weapon of holy reckoning. Mary and Lilith remember that they enjoy fighting beside each other. 

Mary’s sculpture of Shannon, long since completed, sits in a shaft of light that pours in through the window of her wood shop. She has sanded and stained it, and the depth of the grain in the cherry wood makes it look like beach glass in the light. 

Lilith has changed. She doesn’t come to visit Mary with pilfered wine at night anymore. Mary knows that the Halo was everything to her. She wants her friend to have what she’s been expected to have, the achievement that will make her feel worthy. She doesn’t want the woman she loves to have to die to get it. It casts a pall over everything that used to make Mary happy. 

The lingering reminder of the distinct probability of Shannon’s death in battle hangs over whatever this relationship is that they’re having. She cannot fathom the stress that Shannon is under simply by having this hunk of metal in her back, but she is under her own pressures. 

She finds Lilith one night on the cliffs outside the walls of the Cat’s Cradle. Her breathing sounds thick and she sniffles once. The lights of the town below dot the darkness and reflect as little points in Lilith’s large, dark eyes. 

“Do you only love her because she has the Halo?” Lilith asks. 

Mary sighs. “Trust me, the hierarchy did you a favor not putting that thing in your back. It puts a wall between you and everyone else.” 

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” 

Mary frowns and gazes out at the mute landscape spreading out at the foot of the mountain. “I loved her before the Halo.” 

“And she loves you?” 

Mary isn’t sure how to answer this. She knows Shannon does love her, but also that she isn’t prepared to give as much as Mary is, for multitudes of reasons. “Yeah. Why is that important?”

Lilith finally looks at her. “I’m not what I’m supposed to be. I trained harder than anyone, stayed purer than anyone. Passed on…” Her hesitation speaks volumes. “...on a lot of things I wanted, to put myself in line for the Halo. And now I don’t have that, and I don’t have… the things I denied myself.” 

Mary puts a hand on her shoulder. “You’re still a warrior of God. And a great one.” She pulls Lilith into a tight embrace. “And you will always, always be my sister.”

They are twenty-three.

  
  
  


********

  
  


Shannon dies in battle, and Mary is gutted. The Halo passes not to Lilith, but to a girl, a random dead girl who is resurrected due to its power. Ava is not in any way what a Halo Bearer is supposed to be. She is uneducated in scripture, untrained, and uninterested in the job. Lilith is nearly apoplectic. She hasn’t spent time with Mary since that night on the cliff. And Mary can see that she’s seething with anger at having to attempt to train the girl. 

Mary watches Lilith impaled and taken by a Tarask. She comes back from it, different. Whatever is burning inside her now, it gnaws at her spirit. Mary holds her in the catacombs beneath the Vatican and makes her remember who she is: her sister. 

They gather to make their stand against the divine trickster Adriel, and Lilith is once again a warrior that Mary loves to fight beside. She is wounded, and this time, it is Mary who carries Lilith over her shoulder from the battle and wipes the blood from her face. Through a cloud of rock dust, Lilith coughs out, “Thank you.” 

When Lilith wakes, they are at Arq-Tech and Mary is by her side. “What are you still doing here?” Lilith demands, acting like she isn’t glad to see her. 

“Well, I’m sure not just sitting here, waiting for you to come around, Lilith,” Mary retorts. “Say, what’d you do to make your mom so mad she named you Lilith?” 

Lilith smirks. “I think maybe it was a prophecy.” 

Mary doesn’t ask what this means. 

They are twenty-four.

  
  
  


***************

  
  


Lilith sometimes has wings. 

The Order has been disbanded, and Ava has gotten her wish: the Halo returned to its owner, Lucifer, whose fallen status makes him no less an angel. The Divine is complicated, it turns out. He’s beautiful, bitter, melancholic, misunderstood. Full of thwarted ambition. 

Mary sees a certain sympathy between him and Lilith as Lilith presents him, bare-handed, with the Halo, which blazes white in his presence. 

But unloading the Halo doesn’t fix everything. There are still evil men in the world. There is still Violence and not all of it comes from wraith demons. And Lilith remains transformed by her passage to the other side, her brush with the infernal. Hence, the wings, leathery and black. They only appear sometimes. Only Lilith’s will could be strong enough that she literally walks around with a piece of Hell carried inside her at all times and yet still fight for good. 

Mary wakes up with one of Lilith’s leathery, black wings draped over her. She must have been having a wild dream, Mary thinks, for them to come out in her sleep. This is somehow fitting, she thinks. When she was young, Mary liked bad girls. Then she fell in love with Shannon, who was too good. But she thinks that most of all, she loves the kind of girl that knows all too well the bad that lurks within herself and still fights for righteousness with all her might. That’s probably the kind of girl she really needs, after all. Mary is no angel her damn self.

“You know why nobody likes Lilith?” Lilith says sleepily.

“Why’s that?” 

“Because she was made from earth, just like Adam. She was his equal. She wouldn’t do what he said. They made her out to be a mother of demons but really she just went and lived in her own world, that she made, her own way.” 

Mary yawns and tugs at Lilith’s hand, drawing her arm tighter around herself. “Is that what your mom says?” 

Lilith laughs quietly. “I don’t care what my parents say anymore.” 

Mary pats her hand. “Good girl.” 

“ _Bad_ girl, I think,” Lilith retorts, playfully nipping at Mary’s ear. 

“That too.” 

They find their way into each other’s clothes and have slow, drowsy morning sex that is the opposite of how they fight. It’s hard, Mary thinks, to guess where you’re ever going to end up in the world. But this? This works.

“Can you believe it’s been seven years we know each other?” Mary asks as they lay breathless. 

Lilith answers, “And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for seven years. Revelations 12:6.”

Mary has to think to remember the rest of the verse: _But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time._ Mary is pretty sure that means forever.

They are twenty-five.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for indulging my curiosity about what might have gone on between mary and lilith before canon came along.
> 
> Please subscribe if you enjoyed, as I may write more. 
> 
> Also, I'm an artist and am in the process of making some pretty nice fanworks for this show. You can view the small but growing collection right here: https://tinyurl.com/y4jjjko7


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